To the Manor Born

A giraffe looking for a snack at Giraffe Manor, Nairobi. Photographs by Simon Upton.

I love having breakfast with giraffes. They don't talk about the weather or the Iraq war. Rather, they whiffle gently at the homemade jam and exercise some light quality-control over the toast, with their necks—longer than Gisele Bündchen's—waving from the garden to the sunroom. Giraffes have been popping into Nairobi's Giraffe Manor ever since the Earl of Leven's grandson, Jock Leslie-Melville—a relic of the White Mischief days—and his American-born wife, Betty, a former beer-commercial model turned rip-roaring animal conservationist, bought the faux Scottish hunting lodge, in 1974. That year, the amiable herbivores who kept poking their heads interestedly through the first-floor bedroom window were about to be dispossessed, their habitat lost to farmland development and their lives threatened.

Betty persuaded her husband to allow the giraffes to live on their 15-acre estate, and the couple began the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife, based in Kenya and Maryland, which later bought an additional 105 acres for the giraffes. They adopted Daisy, one of the highly endangered Rothschild's giraffes—which can be as tall as 20 feet, making them the tallest of the species. Daisy's descendants have since proliferated, and as I arrive at Giraffe Manor, her latest great-grandchild is wobbling across the lawn, taking its first steps. Birth is pretty startling if you're a giraffe: life starts with a six-foot drop.

Bryony Anderson with a giraffe near Giraffe Manor's entrance.

In 1984, after her husband's death, Betty opened Giraffe Manor as a guesthouse, which is now run by her son from her first marriage, Rick Anderson, and his wife, Bryony. It has just six bedrooms, one furnished with the writer Karen Blixen's furniture (colonial Danish Ikea). The log fireplaces are baronial, the dining room lit only by candles, and, outside, warthog families, the comedy acts of the bush, strut their stuff. The gin-and-tonics have the kick of, well, a giraffe. And after a few, seeing a giraffe put its head through the front door, hoping to find the butler, seems perfectly normal. The butler obliges with nuts. Of course. It is the cocktail hour. Visitors have included Walter Cronkite, Johnny Carson, Stephen Sondheim, Brooke Shields, and Sir Mick Jagger.

This is where you must stay in Nairobi. First, because it is mad—an endangered commodity in our world of global homogenization. Second, because the Kenyan capital is crime-ridden, traffic-jammed, and without a decent hotel. Giraffe Manor, out in the suburb of Langata, doesn't pretend to be swanky. It can be a delicious introduction to Africa, or a rest after a full-on safari. "It's a home, and you are our houseguests," says Bryony. "No spa, no television. Here you walk in the forest, you talk, you sleep, and you read." There are views of Mount Kilimanjaro and the Ngong Hills, meals made with organic fruits and vegetables, and Jock's mother's piano, brought to Kenya in 1919.

You'll experience part of something old—the struggle and romance of pioneer Kenya—and something new: the struggle for wildlife conservation in the midst of an overflowing, impoverished population. As for the giraffes, they are eventually released into the wild. "They adapt very quickly," says Bryony. "But transporting them is tricky. They have the highest blood pressure of any mammal, and have to be strapped upright, otherwise they faint. We avoid low bridges."